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James Holmes' University of Illinois application offers no hint of mental issues

A photo James Holmes submitted with his application to graduate school at the University of Illinois. (Handout)

James Eagan Holmes, the man suspected in one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history, offered no hint of mental problems in early 2011 when he applied for graduate school at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The university on March 21, 2011, accepted Holmes into the neuroscience program, offering him a $22,660 annual stipend and waiving his tuition and fees as long as he kept in good academic standing.

Holmes ultimately rejected the offer to attend the University of Colorado-Denver, where he was a student in the neuroscience program until dropping out in early June.

Extras

He has been charged with 142 counts in connection with the July 20 attack during the new Batman movie, "The Dark Knight Rises." Holmes allegedly burst into the midnight premiere and killed 12 people and injured 58 others in the Century Aurora 16 theater. Authorities also accused Holmes of booby-trapping his Aurora apartment with explosives to cause further damage.

The University of Illinois released documents from Holmes' application process to become a neuroscience graduate student at the school, complete with a personal statement and a photograph of Holmes in sunglasses pointing a strand of hay at a llama.

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Information in the documents released by Illinois, first reported Friday by The News-Gazette
in Champaign, offers a window into the world of the aspiring scientist and brilliant academic striving to learn as much as he could about how the brain works.

"Those who met you ... during your interview visit felt that your personal and professional qualities are truly outstanding and that you will be an excellent match for our program," said the Illinois acceptance letter from professor J. Lee Beverly .

The trove of documents released include Holmes' resume, a personal statement, letters of reference with the names blacked out, confirmation of a criminal background check, a schedule of Holmes' March 2011 campus visit, and multiple e-mail exchanges among school officials about the prospective student who professors winkingly referred to as "Llama."

Holmes was the final neuroscience candidate to visit the campus and obviously wooed the professors, making the tentative list to become a distinguished fellow.

The 176 pages of information provide a picture of a Holmes very different from the alleged killer seen in an Arapahoe County courtroom in recent weeks — a 16-month span in which he went from interviewing for graduate programs to being accused of 24 counts of first-degree murder and 116 counts of attempted murder.

On Thursday, Holmes' attorneys said their client is mentally ill, arguing they needed more information to help their investigation into "the nature or depth of Mr. Holmes' mental illness."

But in March 2011, Holmes was busy scheduling trips to colleges, ending his e-mail exchanges with a jaunty "cheers." He stood out from the other applicants with his pithy photograph taken with a llama — the context of which was not explained in any documents released by the University of Illinois.

"You can't miss the llama," wrote Samuel Beshers, neuroscience program coordinator, in an e-mail to a colleague.

Holmes' application reveals his grade-point average from the University of California at Riverside was 3.94 on a 4.0 scale, that he was Phi Betta Kappa member and his GRE verbal score was in the 98th percentile and quantitative score was in the 94 percentile. His analytical writing score was in the 45 percentile.

His resume also included an entry from his work at a children's camp in which he said he "took an active stance as a positive role model."

Letters of reference, apparently from his undergraduate professors but whose names were blacked out, championed Holmes as "among the top 1 percent of honors students and is self-motivated, intelligent, and driven."

"James is an extraordinarily gifted student who is very dedicated to his academic pursuits," one letter said. "He takes an active role in his education, and brings a great amount of intellectual and emotional maturity into the classroom. He is passionate about a career in science and seeks out opportunities to learn as much as possible about his chosen field of interest, and how he can positively contribute to the world."

In his personal statement, Holmes revealed that as a high school student he interned at the Salk Institute of Biological Studies, working in Terrence J. Sejnowski's computational neurology lab.

He said in other labs he explored the "facets of chemical analysis" and advanced to complicated analytical techniques.

"Rational people act based on incentives for self-fulfillment, including fulfilling needs of self-development and needs of feeling useful and helpful to others," Holmes wrote in his application. "I look forward to fulfilling my quest to advance my knowledge and I plan to use my critical thinking skills by studying the subject I am passionate about, neuroscience."

He described his "unquenchable curiosity, a strong desire to know and explore the unknown, and a need to persist against the odds."

He said his goal was to analyze memory.

"I have always been fascinated by the complexities of long lost thought seemingly arising out of nowhere into a stream of awareness," he wrote. ... "These are the very cognitive processes which enable us to acquire information and retain it. They are at the core of what distinguishes us as people. Due to the seemingly infinite vastness of indefinite knowledge we must be selective in our pursuits of knowledge. This is why I have chose to study the primary source of all things, our own minds."

Among the documents are two pages of handwritten notes detailing some parts of Holmes' background — although it's not clear who wrote them. Among the entries is a listing of Colorado, Iowa and Alabama — apparently universities he was considering.

Officials at the University of Iowa on Friday said they were looking for records that would verify whether Holmes applied there. And officials at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, which also has a graduate program in neurosciences, declined to release any information Friday, citing federal privacy laws.

Holmes ultimately decided to attend CU.

When he made the decision not to attend Illinois, Holmes wrote a short e-mail in which he declined the university's officer and apologized "for any inconvenience this may have caused."

Later that night, a colleague forwarded the news to Beshers, the neuroscience program coordinator.

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